Tagged: Ted Cruz

One of the dangers of the mass forgetfulness endemic to late modernity is that it fosters simplistic, one-sided thinking — tribal thinking, as people like to say these days — in which the members of either faction in any of our ubiquitous “binary choices” refuse, as a matter of principle, to assess or reassess their own premises, preferring instead to regard their sheer...

Socrates and Plato made their criticism of the Greek sophists a central part of their respective philosophic missions. The core of their criticism: The sophists were paid teachers, who as such had a vested material interest in pleasing their listeners, rather than educating them. Thus, fathers brought their sons to the sophists for lessons in how to succeed in practical, political life. The...

For several days, Donald Trump threatened to close the U.S./Mexico border (whatever that means) due to the immigration crisis. While many Trump fans cheered on his latest tough stance (Trump is, in the end, nothing but “stances,” in case you haven’t noticed), and the mainstream media ran with the “Trump is a scary ruffian” angle, I knew he wouldn’t do it. How did...

Ted Cruz, who for years banked his whole political career on being the most principled constitutionalist in the room, along with Ben Sasse, who has played for that same audience since beginning his political career, both voted to support Trump’s national emergency declaration, while simultaneously expressing “deep concerns” (aka backside-covering phony reservations) about giving any president such powers. In short, they just fell...

Remember when Americans who called themselves “constitutional conservatives” got all excited when an elected Republican stood up to the party leadership and refused to budge on principle, come what may? Now those people call themselves “patriots” and prefer Mitch McConnell’s cloying cleverness to Mike Lee’s constitutionalist principles. Remember when Ted Cruz was that constitutionalist standing up to McConnell and the rest of the...

From the Dallas Morning News: Sen. Ted Cruz lauded Trump for putting a spotlight on border security. “Illegal immigration produces tragedies each day,” he said. “I want to commend you for infusing more backbone in Washington. The American people want the border secure.” That’s all. I have nothing to add. Just wanted to point out, by way of finishing a few earlier points,...

Last week, the Senate passed the final 2018 Farm Bill, a massive subsidy to farmers “designed to offset the effects of Trump’s trade war with China,” i.e., designed to win voters in the easiest and most common way, namely by paying them off with other people’s money. One of the senators who voted for this bailout — remember when that was a bad...

Though the most recent polls showed Ted Cruz trouncing Beto O’Rourke in Texas, the actual result was quite close — no surprise there, since polls are fraudulent from the get-go, and will only be as accurate as the laws of probability allow. But what has shaken a lot of Republicans is the fact that Texas, a surefire Republican stronghold, has shown so strongly...

It seems almost a daily occurrence now: Ted Cruz fawning over the greatness of President Trump and defending the lovely man’s honor before all who will listen. Within hours of my last post on the topic comes this remarkable moment from Cruz’s appearance on “Fox and Friends” — you know, on that pro-Trump network that wouldn’t give Cruz a platform during the primaries...

During the 2016 Republican primaries, Donald Trump and his surrogates smeared Ted Cruz as a fake Christian, a pathological liar, and a globalist tool whose marriage was a sham to cover for his serial romps with aides, whose wife was a climbing, hysterical schemer with “Stepford wife” overtones, and whose father was involved in the JFK assassination. I’m beginning to wonder…. Today, Right...